Of Expectations and Realities
by badgermushroom
Summary: A reflection on Rory's life. Mentions of Amy/Rory.


A/N: Me writing something vaguely het? Blasphemy! I dunno, the idea popped into my head and I just couldn't resist. Rory is far too adorable for his own good. Enjoy!

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><p>Having lived his whole life in a town with little more than a post office and a duck pond (and one suspiciously devoid of ducks, at that), it pretty much went without saying that Rory Williams had grown up with a fairly boring life. The farthest he had ever gotten to leaving was a trip to London when he was three an event he couldn't remember much of. For the first ten years of his childhood, scrawny and nerdy as he was, it seemed certain he was doomed to a lonely, boring existence in Leadworth. And then Amelia Pond moved in with her aunt.<p>

Amelia Pond was everything Leadworth was not. She wasn't boring or dull or quiet. She wasn't even technically British. She was headstrong, stubborn, loud, feisty, and Scottish. And even at age ten Rory knew he was head over heels in love.

For the next twelve years Rory followed Amelia (eventually shortened to Amy in their teen years) like a lost puppy, taking whatever affection she happened to throw his way. He listened to her talk about the Doctor, the madman with the blue box (the TARDIS, Amy called it). He helped her make models of the man, let her dress him up in brown pinstripes and blue shirt, completing the look with something she called a 'sonic screwdriver'. And Rory let her, _encouraged _her to believe, well past the age it was acceptable, too caught up in Amy to question it. And when he finished high school Rory decided to go medical school to become a doctor.

A few short years later Amy was a kiss-o-gram, Rory was a nurse (couldn't even properly make it through medical school, that's how pathetic his life was), and they were in a 'sort of relationship thing' (Amy's choice of description). And then one day Rory's boring life in Leadworth, which had been teetering precariously since Amy's arrival, was promptly tripped and fell flat on its face when the Doctor showed up, proving himself to be very real.

The Doctor was exactly how Rory had imagined him from the twelve years of description he got from Amy. He was quite mad, but also so very brilliant and energetic and amazing, and just like with Amy, Rory couldn't help but feel drawn in by this utterly strange (and probably dangerous) man as he and Amy (and apparently Jeff, too, somehow) helped the Doctor save the world from aliens (something the Doctor apparently did quite a lot). And Rory chased Amy as she chased the Doctor, and for the first time Rory realized he was getting a glimpse of a very different life he could be having, one full of excitement and adventure and running and saving people. But then the Doctor and his blue box were gone, vanishing just as suddenly as they had arrived and all he had left was Leadworth. But Amy was still there (though considerably more subdued following the Doctor's second disappearance) so Rory was happy.

For the next two years, life in Leadworth went on in its boring, predictable way. Since everyone knew the Doctor was real Amy stopped talking about him. Rory wasn't sure whether he should be relieved about that or worried (he wasn't blind, he had seen the way Amy had looked at the Doctor), but then he proposed and Amy said yes and for a time it looked like Rory's life was going to turn out exactly as expected. And then the night before his wedding the Doctor popped out of a cake and he found himself chasing Amy as she chased the Doctor all across time and space and things got a little muddled as he died and somehow became a centurion and lived for two thousand years as a plastic soldier and lots of other confusing and marvelous things happened, including finally marrying Amy.

Looking back, sometimes Rory couldn't help but be a little disappointed that he wasn't living a boring, quiet life in Leadworth with Amy. Most of the time, though, he was glad the universe had decided against that fate, and as he looked out on his wife and grown daughter (he still couldn't quite wrap his head around that one) as they shared a bottle of wine, watching their excitement over the Doctor's non-death (and Amy's subsequent horror at realizing she was the Time Lord's mother-in-law), Rory knew that, given the chance, he would do it all over again as long as it meant the he would be here at this exact moment, being pulled into a hug by Amy and River.

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><p>AN: Gah, that got way too fluffy at the end. By the by, I don't actually know how old Rory is supposed to be, but I assumed he had to be older than Amy, since when the Doctor returns from his 'five minute hop into the future', she's nineteen, and Rory's already a nurse.

So, love it? Hate it? Want me to suffer in the special hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater for writing it? Let me know!

-badgermushroom out! :d


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